Australian Population Institute

APop or The Australian Population Institute http://www.apop.com.au/, is an organisation put together by developers and other members of the growth lobby to promote a 'big Australia' - that is, a huge population in Australia. APop campaigns for higher and higher immigration and also for policies for bigger families. Although almost entirely officiated by members from industries driving the growth lobby, the organisation has hosted talks by high profile and credible-sounding people, like university lecturers or authors, which added cachet to their big Australia agenda. The ABC used to quote them a lot as though they were a disinterested demographic organisation, but seems to have stopped doing this in past few years, perhaps due to complaints about APop's growth agenda affecting its objectivity, but perhaps more likely due to a decline in APop activities.

See http://www.apop.com.au/news.html At first APop seemed to be the peak growth lobby developer body, with branches in all or most states, but the Property Council of Australia appears to have taken over the baton as the ultra peak body. However, APop is still in there with a fascinating cast of growth lobby stars with fingers in property development pies at all levels. I have attached a picture of the current APop front page, followed by some information about the industry backgrounds of Committee members. Note that there are quite strong links with the Scanlon Foundation which itself has strong links to ATSE and to the Multicultural Foundation of Australia and thence to most recent prime ministers and opposition leaders. APop in 2009 hosted Professor Andrew Markus, who "presented "Mapping Social Cohesion 2009: The Scanlon Foundation surveys". The presentation provided an overview of the Scanlon Foundation survey findings, with particular attention to change over the last two years and to the challenges facing maintenance of a large immigration program. "

Backgrounds of Current Executive and Committee members Victoria and South Australia :

Jane Nathan (President) - author of many pro growth articles
Michael Hickin botham, Vice President, Hickinbotham Group - South Australia's (SA), describes itself as "the largest and longest established building group in South Australia."
Albert Dennis, (Past President) Dennis Family Corporation - major developers, builds suburbs
Greg Crafter, Johnston Withers Solicitors
Victorian Committee:
Douglas Coomes - Spiire Australia Pty Ltd, Land Development consultants
Chris McNeil, Economist and former Policy Director with Urban Development Institute of Australia, UDIA (Victoria)
Frank Bosco, Director Bosco Jonson, town planners
Tony Fry, Scanlon Foundation see: http://candobetter.net/taxonomy/term/1179
Brenton Gardner, Housing Industry Australia
Jim Curnow, Alexander & Symonds, Surveyors
Tim Jackson, Chief Executive Officer, City of Playford, South Australia

Origins of APop

"The Committee for Economic Development of AustraliaCEDA Conference, November 1999, inaugurated the Australian Population Institute (APop), a group with the sole purpose of promoting a big Australian population. Apop seems to be mainly composed of business people involved in the property development industries.[1] Altogether nine papers were delivered in favour of, or neutral about, population increase, including that of the key speaker, Professor Withers.[2] Without in any way impugning the sincerity and disinterest of the academics involved, Tom Morrow points out in Growing for Broke, that Apop - composed of businessmen with a vested interest in maintaining high population growth - thus benefited from the cachet of academic disinterest, whilst only airing one point of view.[3] Morrow also criticises the lack of an ecological perspective." (Source: Sheila Newman, The Growth Lobby in Australia and its Absence in France

NOTES

[1] This information was yielded by investigating the business associations of the officials of Apop as listed on the Apop website and downloaded on 20/7/2001 from http://www.apop.com.au/people.htm. Additional information about business interests was obtained from the Business Who's Who of Australia, Dun and Bradstreet Marketing P/L, 35th Edition, 2001.
[2] Tom Morrow, Going for Broke, Tomorrow Press, 2001, p.109
[3] Ibid.,"Five of the papers were delivered by university professors, two by PhDs, one by a Federal Cabinet Minister and one by a Shadow Cabinet Minister: impeccably qualified commentators, all - and none of them directly from the corporate sector that was hosting the event."

The Fairfax media sank to a new low recently in pushing its in-house pro-population bias (in The Age) by publishing commentary on this crucial issue from the Australian Population Institute.

Unfortunately, the article, ‘We should look to the west as our population swells’, by Jane Nathan, 16 July 2015, highlights the way in which the left-liberal establishment in Australia, including Fairfax, now sings from the same song sheet as free-market growth maniacs. While it may be claimed that the population-boosting rant presented in this article is the opinion of the Australian Population Institute and not Fairfax, Fairfax, of course, can exercise considerable bias in its selection of opinion piece commentary. It has a broad menu of pro-population vested interests to choose from. It is worth mentioning that material presented as commentary or opinion does not have to stand up to any serious standard of factual accuracy or rationality in the eyes of the Australian Press Council. Commentary, therefore, provides an opportunity to push an in-house view to extremes without being very accountable about it. Fairfax may respond that ‘balance’ will be struck over the longer-term with the subsequent publication of opposing views. Just when this may occur or whether subsequent opinion would directly address the inaccuracies and bias of commentary like this within a reasonable time frame remains unclear.

The opinion piece presents a one-dimensional account of booming population growth in the western suburbs of Melbourne, with no recognition, let alone discussion, of the potential short or long-term damage that rapid population growth may cause. It is unadulterated propaganda. Without any consideration of such challenges, the core message of the commentary is simple: rapid population growth is manageable and beneficial; the suburb of Sunshine in Melbourne’s west is an example to be emulated everywhere; and such rapid population growth is compatible with the creation and maintenance of thriving harmonious communities.

In advocating this mind-numbingly superficial view, a number of spurious assumptions are made. It is stated that the tertiary-educated population of Sunshine has increased from 21 to 50 per cent, and the number of women working has increased markedly. What are we to make of such claims in relation to the issue of population growth? The implication is that rapid population growth has the effect of spreading wealth around – that population growth has lifted Sunshine up from being a down trodden working class area to one of higher social status. The reality is that Sunshine remains one of the most socio-economically disadvantaged areas within metropolitan Melbourne. The 2011 Census showed that Sunshine remained in the bottom decile in the Australian Bureau of Statistics Index of Socio-Economic Disadvantage.

The implied linkages are logically flawed and factually feeble. Levels of tertiary education have risen across the board over time and would likely have risen in Sunshine to some degree, despite its low socio-economic status, in the absence of population growth. As to the number of working women in Sunshine, the growth is presented in terms of raw numbers and not rates. The cited numerical growth in employed women is likely to be a simple reflection of overall population growth and not improved labour market access for women in Sunshine. In any case, historically, the workforce participation rates of disadvantaged women in poor areas have often been high – out of necessity. The question should be -- what proportion of women in Sunshine has access to decent jobs? No matter how this question may be answered, the links to population growth remain tenuous.

Reference is made to the provision of new infrastructure in Sunshine, to serve the burgeoning population. The suggestion is that without population growth, we would not have such wonderful new infrastructure. Again, there is a worrying absence of balance and objectivity in this claim. It is widely accepted that rapid population growth in Australia, and particularly in Australia’s capital cities, has created a situation of chronic infrastructure shortfall in many essential areas. In this context, to simply say that some infrastructure has been provided in Sunshine, without any assessment of the remaining shortfall, and of the social and economic consequences of such a shortfall, is bewildering. The public deserves a much better standard of public commentary than this.

Just how misinformed the Australian Population Institute is may be gleaned from its website, where it is claimed that current levels of population growth will take Australia to between 25 and 27 million people by 2050, which it maintains is far too little. Where have these people been for the past decade! Current mid-range population projections from the Australian Bureau of Statistics point to around 37.6 million people by that year. That is roughly the equivalent of an additional three cities the size of Melbourne in a time frame of 25 years.

It may not be surprising that someone, somewhere, may hold such a silly, ill-informed view. But, that it should be shouted from the rooftops by Fairfax deserves greater scrutiny. “Centre-left”? Not likely. This is Fairfax at its hypocritical best and music to the ears of the growth maniacs who are constantly at the doors of our political leaders demanding ever greater levels of population growth to keep the gravy train of dumb growth rolling along. Don’t let Fairfax’s preoccupation with asylum seekers, human rights and political corruption fool you. On basic issues of the economy and economic democracy, Fairfax is far to the right of centre.

Contrary to the Fairfax’s in house view, population is not a politically neutral issue, whereby population growth may be reasonably advocated by either the left or right of the political spectrum. Unquestioning advocacy of population growth by ‘left’ intellectuals reflects an historic capitulation to the deregulatory, free-market right. This is particularly so in Australia where, because of decades of economic short-sightedness, the only way to keep Gross Domestic Product growth rates high in the absence of a mining boom is population growth and city building (given the serious structural impoverishment of the Australian economy – we sell dirt and a little agriculture to the world in return for elaborately transformed goods). In reality, the Australian economy’s reliance upon population growth is a form of crisis management, from which particular sectoral interests parasitically and disproportionately benefit (e.g. housing, banking and retail). For these sectors, any correction of the structural imbalance in the Australian economy would be perceived as a dire threat.

Reliance upon population growth is dumb growth writ large and Fairfax’s faux humanitarianism helps the free-market right along its way.